


Crosse My Ts and Dot My Is

by thegoodthebadandthenerdy



Series: Femslash Feb 2018 [10]
Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: F/F, Feelings, Femslash February, Femslash February 2018, First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, Lacrosse, Mutual Pining, Pre-Relationship, actual honest to god communication, oh and
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 06:01:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13630128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegoodthebadandthenerdy/pseuds/thegoodthebadandthenerdy
Summary: Sometimes you just need a night under the stars.Femslash Feb Day 10: "Alone"





	Crosse My Ts and Dot My Is

**Author's Note:**

> lol yall remember when i promised you this oneshot nearly a literal year ago? well it's here, all aboard the hagatha train
> 
> takes place the day and night of the wedding, so if you arent caught up through at least ch. 20 turn back now

**Agatha**

"Kitchen's this way, I think?" I called back to Hannah, hefting my box up a little higher and trailing away.

I could hear her footsteps behind me as we made our way through the spacious halls, finding more than one person half in formal wear, half in casual wear as they bustled to get everything done on time.

Eventually, we had to ask for directions because we'd passed the same bathroom four times and I'd nearly dropped the box of food when a child, no more than 4, ran right into my legs.

Turns out the man we asked for help was Winnifred's father. Small world.

With a bright greeting and an even brighter smile, he pointed us in the right directon. In my defense, I was only one turn off, so.

I knocked on the door with my elbow, trying desperately no to upset the delicate balance of foods in my arms.

"Special delivery," I chirped.

The only other person in the room aside from Hannah and I stood at the island in the center of the kitchen. With a sharp knife and a determined look, they thinly sliced something, careful not to hit their finger.

"Just a second," they muttered.

A full achingly slow minute later and they finally turned towards us. "Sorry about that, but I'm a little notorious for kitchen disasters involving knives, and Winnie'd kill me if I had to go to the emergency room a few hours before we get married," they laughed gently. 

"Oh! You must be Dana, uh, congrats on the marriage thing; that sounds awful, I'm not entirely sure how to congratulate someone on their wedding. Anyway! I'm Agatha, that's Hannah, where can we set the food?"

"Dan's fine," they laughed. "Dad's the only one who really calls me Dana. And surprisingly, that's not the worst wording of a congratulations I've received. But you can set the food anywhere, really, as long as it doesn't smush anything."

It took a few seconds of awkward shuffling, the only sounds being glass against glass and the slice of Dan's knife, but finally Hannah and I's arms were free of the heavy glass pans.

"Anything else we can do to help y'all make this go a little smoother?" Hannah asked, planting her elbows on the closest counter edge and resting her face in her hands.

"Not really; Win's family is practically a small army so we've got pretty much everything covered," they chuckled. "But thanks for the offer."

"All right, then I guess we need to go find the boys for our goodbyes and head out," I said, turning to Hannah.

"You're not staying for the wedding?" Dan piped up curiously.

"No invite," I replied. "Which isn't surprising considering I've never met Winnie and this is the first time you and I've ever met."

Dan finally focused on us completely. "I've had an exhausting week, so this isn't going to be as tactful as it should, but who are you, exactly?"

"Agatha Wellbelove, at your service. You'll probably be seeing my best friend, Baz, eventually. And this is my friend, Hannah Kimura."

"Oh!" they exclaimed, a light sparking behind their eyes. "You're that Agatha! I'm so sorry, like I said, exhausting week. Win's gonna be pissed I met you first," they grinned.

I beamed back. "Glad to be of service, and you're sure we can't help with anything?"

"Absolutely," Dan nodded.

* * *

"Headed out?" Baz asked, sliding his arm around my shoulders. 

"Mm," I hummed. "Yeah, we'll be back for you later. Maybe."

He turned a wicked grin on me. "What?" he said, before dropping his voice to a whisper. "You gonna be too preoccupied hooked at the mouth with-"

"You're horrible, you know that?" I blushed, deep red that coated my ears and my neck and my cheeks like paint.

"I know," he winked, pulling me in for a tight hug. "Make smart decisions," he sing-songed in my ear.

All I could manage to do was release an indignant squawk from deep within my throat. Hannah, a few feet away chatting amicably with Simon, turned at the sound, her lips already pulling into a damning smile. "And that's our cue, boys," she laughed, patting Simon on the shoulder in way of parting.

She tossed her arms around Baz's shoulders from the back, resting her chin on his shoulder and squishing their cheeks together. They swayed slightly - seemingly not on purpose, just with the force of Hannah's hug - and said something to one another that I didn't catch, but left them both with shit-eating grins.

"You ready to hit the road, Ags?" she asked, turning the grin on me.

"Always," I replied as we pushed through the doors, cold, welcomed wind smacking us in the face, a promise of the comfortable day to come.

* * *

We hadn't really planned how were were going to while the hours away until we went back to pick up Baz and Simon. Which wasn't to say that I was strictly against spending a day winding through unfamiliar countryside hills with Hannah happily behind the wheel, singing along to everything on the radio, because I wasn't.

But maybe it would have helped cut the spreading tension in the air.

The radio seemed louder today, the melodies more oppressive than light, the voices filling the air around us instead of drifiting through like a wanderer.

Hannah's voice was even off - strained around the edges, as if it was all she could do to keep it going. I figured pointing it out might bring about something terrible, maybe release or maybe silence, which, at the moment, were two things I didn't want, so I left it alone.

Eventually, her voice trailed off, and the radio fizzled between static and garbled words. I rolled my window down, letting the wind whip my hair around as I rested my head against the headrest. 

"You wanna find somewhere to eat?" Hannah piped up suddenly, shattering the quiet in some precise way.

I rolled my head to look at her, with her keen eyes on the road and the edges of her hair tousling from the wind from my window. From her dimpled cheek, no doubtedly from nervously chewing on the inside of it.

I closed my eyes and replied, "Sure."

The silence seemed to shift from a great weight to something buzzing, an electrical hum I could feel in the hairs on the back of neck and my arms. She exhaled soundly as she flicked on the blinker, and I let her carry me off to wherever we might land - eyes closed, burning with yellow sunlight and knowing.

* * *

We ended up in a little off-route diner buried between hills and shrouded from most eyes. I'd ended up turned nearly upside down in the backseat trying to retrieve my wallet from where it had fallen from my possession at some point in our trip and slid under the front seat, but we'd eventually found our way inside.

A waiter in a crisp navy uniform had seated us in front of the wide glass-front, which was marked with children-sized smudges and fingerprints on both sides of the panes, but somehow still retained its picturesque view.

I ordered the largest strawberry milkshake and biggest loaded burger I could get my hands on, deciding I might as well enjoy the taste of whatever this particular meal might bring about. 

Hannah, on the other hand, had her sights set on a particular taste, and by the scrunch of her face I could tell she wasn't going to give up until she got it.

"Do y'all have chili?" she asked the waiter.

He nodded, flopping bangs bouncing against his forehead.

"And fries? Chips," she amended. "whatever the hell they're called." Somehow, even with the bare minimum of curses on her tongue, she didn't sound the least bit malicious.

The waiter laughed slightly and nodded again, pen hovering above his pad.

"Can you just pour as much chili as you're legally allowed to serve on top of the biggest plate you own of fries?"

"I'll see what I can do," he promised, tongue wrapping around his words in a thick accent that I couldn't place. Something, farther North, I think.

Hannah tapped her fingers against the table as we waited for our orders, her violet nails ticking against the tabletop in a harmonious beat.

I squirmed restlessy in my seat. Things had never been like this between she and I. We always found the words, and if we couldn't, if they'd all been used up, our silences were home-like.

"Hey, did Coach ever show you the tapes for the new kid we're scouting?" I finally burst, unable to stand the ticking of her nails like an ending clock.

"Yeah. She's good, but I'm worried about her carding rates. I get that in the heat of the game things happen, but there should never be that much yellow," she replied, leaning forward to sip at her cola. 

"She's rough around the edge's 's all," I replied. "Don't you remember me back in the day? In our first game together I accidentally body-checked one of your girls so hard she lost her mouthguard."

She cracked a smile around her straw, gnawing contemplatively on the end of it. "I remember. I wanted your head on a spike, for that, even if her guard was loose and thus her losing it wasn't completely your fault. Don't you remember me going after you?"

"Remember it? I might as well still have the knot and bruise you left me with from your crosse! Don't you remember afterwards when, shit, who was it, Tiff was mine, and I believe your girl was…Qiara - they formally introduced us after the game and I admired you so much, but it took me the whole night to nurse my ego back to a point where I could let us be friends."

"Well it probably didn't help that my girls crushed yours that night," Hannah said, sweeping her ponytail over her shoulder dramatically.

I barked a laugh. "We'd gone to a golden goal - the first I'd ever played - I had the ball, every girl around me that I could pass to was marked, but I risked it anyway and you nabbed the pick up and got it down the pitch before I even realized what'd happened. Of _course_ it didn't help," I crowed as the waiter returned, depositing my burger and Hannah's fry _monstrosity_ in front of each of us respectively.

"That's disgusting," I stated flatly, motioning toward the pile in front of her. 

"You just don't know good cuisine, Wellbelove. If I ever got you Stateside for some of my grandmother's food," she whistled, long and low. "We'd fix your palette up in no time."

"'We'? Have you been holding out on me, Han?" I asked jokingly, leaning across the table.

"Absolutely. I'll have to show you sone time," she grinned, digging into her platter.

Taking that as my cue, I sunk into my burger, letting myself find reprieve in it from my long, weird day. 

We chatted here and there, a few more lax things we'd yet to discuss, a few school things we'd rather not discuss, but did so because we were one another's go to for complaining about anything remotely academic. I monologued about Lucy, much to Hannah's delight, and threw around a few ideas for the channel in between. She talked about her latest chat with her sister, how much she missed her and couldn't wait until she could visit her in Spain, hopefully sometime soon.

We managed to pass the rest of daylight and dusk in this familiar territory. Long enough that I thought we'd finally broken whatever tension we'd had.

But naturally, I had to mess that up, too.

"Done," Hannah proclaimed mightily, dropping her napkin onto her plate. Sure as shit, she'd finished every last bite.

"Not quite," I laughed, having long been done with my meal. Motioning to the corner of my own lips, I supplied, "Right there."

She grabbed up her napkin once more and set to swiping at her face earnestly - somehow missing the speck of chili every time.

"No, not your left, my left," I instructed. "No, up- oh, for fuck's sake-" I leaned across the table completely and tugged my thumb down the corner of her mouth, pulling dangerously at her lips.

Her mouth rounded softly as I pulled back, wiping my hand clean on my discarded napkin before standing quickly and heading for the door, not another word leaving my mouth.

* * *

The silence was back in full force.

The radio had given out all together, the windows were shut tight due to the too frigid air they collected and released inside the car, and we were obviously not speaking to one another.

Though, inside my head fires were raging and shit was decidedly hitting the fan. I cursed myself for not thinking first, for not just laughing at her lack of direction until she got it, for not just leaving well enough alone.

I've been crushing on Hannah for so much longer than I'd ever admit to another soul. I'd been keeping myself from crossing that line for years. And when I finally do it's with as little tact and forethought as _that_? If I weren't so embarrassed I'd be laughing myself silly right now.

We still had a couple hours before we were set to pick the boys back up, so when I realized we were headed back the way we came, my stomach dropped. 

I'm not sure how any of this is supposed to play out, but we were getting awfully close, maybe twenty minutes away-

We hooked a left onto a dainty side road that I hadn't even seen and it takes us out into an open range of land. We slowed, until the ground was even with the road and we pulled off the side of it into the grass.

Hannah popped the key out of the ignition and clambered out of the car, only to open the back door and snatch up her jacket - a big, denim thing with a warm lining and patches up the arm.

"You coming?" she asked, leaning back in the driver's side door. Her mouth was set in determination, but her eyes held their usual lightness, and so I nodded slowly and did the same dance to retrieve my own jacket.

"My" jacket might be too loose of a term - I still technically had Hannah's team branded jacket. I really hadn't tried to return it to her.

I shrugged it on, pulling my hair out of the collar before shoving my hands in the pockets and following her around the front of the car.

She was leaned against the front bumper, face tilted toward the sky, unabashed moonlight sparking off of her hair.

I perched myself next to her, leaving a respectable amount of space between our arms, our legs, and sat quietly as she figured out what she wanted to say - as that was, in fact, what she was doing; I'd seen that expression enough times to know.

Out here, in the middle of nowhere, without communities and little metropolitans, without so much life it was suffocating, the stars were breathtakingly visible.

"I don't know how to say what I want to say, Ags," Hannah confided to the stars, hands momentarily floundering until they found home in the pockets of her jacket.

I swallowed roughly, nodding in tandem with my racing heart. "Han, I get it." My voice was embarrassingly strained. "Really, you don't have to say… _anything_."

She turned to face me, her eyebrows pinched. "Agatha-" she started, her face smoothing into understanding. "I'm not _mad_ ," she finally said. 

"Well the dead silent car ride was giving a different message!" I crowed, finally letting all of the swelling feelings in my chest burst. "So if you're pissed at me, just tell me- we've at least always been able to do that."

"Fine! I am pissed- I'm pissed at myself. Because we've been on countless rides together, gone to plenty of meals just the two of us, chatted for hours on end - everything we've done today we've done before, but today it all felt too real. It felt like a date, and I'm pissed at myself for how much I want that because you're already my best friend, Agatha."

I felt the blood rush to my cheeks, taking over the pale of my skin in a blatant betrayal of my thoughts. 

"It's been three years, and I thought I'd get over it, but I haven't," she murmured, planting her hand daringly between us.

I bit the inside of my cheek. "I wish you'd just told me," I said with a private acceptance - we were having ths conversation here and now, no matter the outcome. "It would have saved a lot of heartache, it sounds like."

She smiled ruefully, bitterly. "You too, then?" she asked.

I nodded, resting my hand beside hers, leaving only a sliver between the respective warmth of skin. 

"We have such a good friendship, Ags. Seriously - you've been my go to for years, and I know that I'm not Baz, but I'm pretty high up there, yeah?"

"Baz's basically my brother, you're my best friend."

"Exactly. We're best friends. So why throw away best friendship, something that'll last a lifetime, for something that could crash and burn in a week, in a month? It's not worth losing you."

I considered that for a moment. She was right, of course. It was the biggest reason that I hadn't done anything about anything - would I really want to trade our friendship for something so fragile?

Fortunately, I already had a great counterargument. I had, after all, had a long time to think about this. Lucy and I had had many silent arguments about this exact topic.

"Nothing guarentees that we'll be friends in a week or a month or a year, you know," I stated. "Hell, we could get in a fight tomorrow and never speak to one another again. You could get called up to the big leagues and remember me fondly as you win a championship or twenty. I could move to Wales on a whim and never see you again. It's all a matter of perspective."

She sighed, pressing her pinkie against mine. "What about the flipside, then?"

"What about it?"

"What if it happens instead?"

"What, we dive in headfirst, figure it out along the way, and make the most of whatever time we've got?"

"No, yes, I guess. What if it goes good and then it…doesn't?"

"I can't promise that won't happen, Hannah."

"I'm not asking you to, I'm just asking you to consider it."

"I have. If you haven't noticed, I've been doing a lot of internal arguing for a while."

She huffed a small laugh. "No, I'd noticed."

I turned back toward the stars, connecting fake shapes in my mind so I'd bide my time instead of blurting out whatever nervous-induced thought crossed my mind. 

"What're you thinking?" I asked after a few offbeats.

"I'm thinking that I want to kiss you under the stars and see where it goes from there, Agatha Wellbelove."

I grinned, wide and true, flipping my hand over to give her one last chance to back out. She locked eyes with me, pressing her palm against mine, and asked, "And you?"

"Im thinking I'd like you to kiss me under the stars and see where it goes from there, Hannah Kimura."

She surged forward, taking one last inhale before our lips connected.

The first day I saw Hannah after we lost touch was when I showed up for my first day on our Uni's lax team. I was a bundle of nerves, even though I was good - knew I was good. I was convinced I was going to do something to royally screw up my chances on the team. And then, from the crowd, came that wildcard captain from matches long past. The one who set my heart on fire and kicked up the competition in my veins. The one who made me want to play better, be _better_. 

I thought, when her smiling face made a bee line for me, that it felt a bit like coming home.

But how wrong I was.

This, right here, was home. 

The kiss itself wasn't superbly spectacular. Then again, most first kisses weren't. It was soft, a little too scared, a little too reverent, but that was on both sides, and something I knew, for a fact, could only be worked out through practice.

But the feeling in my chest when she pulled back just a tad, when her breath was ghosting over my lips, when I saw her eyes were closed and the secret dimple in her chin was peeking through - that, that was everything.

"I think we can do better than that," I whispered, not wanting to break the bubble around us.

She beamed, just like she had that first day, and replied, "Oh, definitely," before leaning back in, definitely not for the last time that night.

**Author's Note:**

> let's talk lax terminology folks:
> 
> \- yellow card; presented by an umpire to warn the player, if two are awarded to the same player it means that she can next receive a red card and be suspended from play for the rest of the game (though the rules differ regionally on whether she would also be suspended from the next game if given a red card) if she continues playing dangerously and/or being unsportsmanlike
> 
> \- crosse: yall probably have this by now but it's the stick they use to control the ball
> 
> \- golden goal; it's a tiebreaker for when the game's still tied after two 3-minute periods of overtime, first team to score in the 3-minute golden goal wins the game
> 
> \- marked; within a stick's length of an opponent 
> 
> \- pick up; using your crosse to scoop up a loose ball
> 
> also vktrs update i have Not abandoned it! i'll be taking a break from fic for a few weeks after femslash feb, but after tht i wanna bring yall the next chapter!! hint: its v penny-centric in my notes
> 
> and i've changed my url again since we last saw one another, so find me on tumblr @desertrosetico now!!


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